The Management by Color principle
Management by Color provides a simple and intuitive way to visualize personalities in the workplace through color, and then to use that visual to gain an understanding of how those personalities (or colors) either harmonize, complement, or clash with one another. The fundamental principle of management by color is that personalities can be "colored" instead of "labeled", and even those colors are not aligned with a certain set of characteristics (for example, 'green' would not typecast a person into a predetermined 'group' or label); the colors are merely a reflection of a person's tendencies across a diverse range of human dimensions, of which any combination may be used for the generation of an individual's "color", for the purpose of comparing it with others within an organization.
In the modern workplace, it has been common practice to match a person's skills to job requirements, as well as to obtain some psychometric data about a person's personality traits. Once most of these dimensions are matched to a major extent, a fit is determined and a staffing decision is made (i.e. recruitment/promotion/transfer proceeds). However, in many cases a skill match and appealing personality profile does not make a successful match, and this has prompted the theory behind Management by Color. How does a person, with their own set of human dimensions, fit within a team? So often a supposed "star recruit" flounders because of a mismatch within the team or organization in terms of how they relate to the people they need to work with.
Whilst individual personality tests can be valuable, it may be that people strive to attain the label they feel would be most desired by the organization. The idea of Colors is that people can indicate their behavioral tendencies and preferences on a simple sliding scale, where the dimensions are described in neutral, objective terms, and a particular mix of red, green and blue will result in those preferences being summarized into a color, which can then be placed against colleague's colors, and a palette can be created as a rich visualization of the human dimensions prevalent in a team or organization.
Management by Color is a tool to be used to determine how important it is that a person fits the team or the organization, more so than having the right experience or qualifications. But how would we determine "fit"? In general terms, it could be described as the way in which a person either complements a team by further increasing a certain set of characteristics its members display, or the way in which a person may bring opposite personal strengths to a team and thereby balance that team (or disrupt it). Whether you want to balance a team or bolster its predominant characteristics is a matter of choice, requirement and success or failure. How the results of the Color tool are used is entirely an organization's choice. There is no right color or wrong color, there is a mix of colors which may or may not work in a group scenario. Depending on the nature of the work a group is doing, complementary or similar colored personalities may be successful, yet in a different group environment, with different tasks and goals, contrasting colored personalities may prove more successful.
The principles underlying Management by Color are not scientific or psychometric, but are based on a collection of anecdotal experiences and modern human characteristic theories. The characteristics (human dimensions) we use to determine a "color" or type are many and varied, but a critical premise is that these characteristics are described as objectively as possible, in order to obtain the most unbiased evaluations. For example, a person who perceives that an organization is seeking "self confident" team members, and is required to undertake a personality profile, will probably select a favorable score for questions about assertiveness, confidence, decision making, and a range of similarly described dimensions. Words such as 'assertive' and 'confident' carry subjective weight. Alternatively, Management by Color provides a range of dimensions described in neutral terms, where both high and low scores in any dimension could be perceived as positive (or negative!). It also supports assessment of a person's human dimensions by co-workers, in a 360 degree model, thereby not relying solely on a person's self evaluation.
Management by Color is an easy means of visualizing the current 'flavor' or hues of the personalities in a team or organization, and then matching or contrasting those colors, depending on the desired mix. It's as personal as decorating, and some combinations may work better than others!
Management by Color can be used to provide quick visual information where decisions need to be made about recruitment, promotion, transfers, team structures, project resources, and in fact, any staffing decision. It does not require any particular expertise to administer, and the dimensions used to create the colors can be universally applied to any organization.
